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Day Brightener – A Retrospective – I’m Older Than Dirt

Someone asked the other day, ‘What was your favorite fast food when you were growing up? ‘We didn’t have fast food when I was growing up, ‘I informed him, All the food was slow ‘C’mon, seriously. Where did you eat?’ ‘It was a place called ‘home,’ I explained! ‘Mom cooked every day and when Dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I didn’t like what she put on my plate, I was allowed to sit there until I did like it. By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn’t tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table.

Here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if I figured his system could have handled it:

Some parents NEVER owned their own house, wore Levis, set foot on a golf course, traveled out of the country or had a credit card.

My parents never drove me to school. I had a bicycle that weighed probably 50 pounds, and only had one speed, (slow).

We didn’t have a television in our house until I was 10. It was, of course, black and white, and the station went off the air at 11, after playing the national anthem and a poem about God. It came back on the air at about 6 a.m. And there was usually a locally produced news and farm show on, featuring local people.

I never had a telephone in my room. The only phone was on a party line. Before you could dial, you had to listen and make sure some people you didn’t know weren’t already using the line.

Pizzas were not delivered to our home… But milk was & so was bread.

All newspapers were delivered by boys and all boys delivered newspapers, my brother delivered a newspaper, six days a week. He had to get up at 5 AM every morning.

Movie stars kissed with their mouths shut. At least, they did in the movies! There were no movie ratings because all movies were responsibly produced for everyone to enjoy viewing, without profanity or violence or most anything offensive.

If you grew up in a generation before there was fast food, you may want to share some of these memories with your children or grandchildren. Just don’t blame me if they bust their gut laughing.